A form of machine which the professional airmen say has yet to be developed is the small monoplane, carrying two passengers at most, and of low speed--not more than twenty miles an hour at most. In this age of speed mania the idea of deliberately planning a conveyance or vehicle that shall not exceed a low limit seems out of accord with public desire. But the low speed airplane has the advantage of needing no extended field in which to alight. It reaches the ground with but little momentum to be taken up and can be brought up standing on the roof of a house or the deck of a ship. Small machines of this sort are likely to serve as the runabouts of the air, to succeed the trim little automobile roadsters as pleasure craft.
[Illustration: © International Film Service.
The beginning of the fourth year of the war brought a notable change in aërial tactics. For three years everything had been sacrificed to speed. Such aërial duels as have been described were encouraged by the fact that aircraft were reduced to the proportions needful for carrying one man and a machine gun. The gallant flyers went up in the air and killed each other. That was about all there was to it. While as scouts, range finders, guides for the artillery, they exerted some influence on the course of the war, as a fighting arm in its earlier years, they were without efficiency. The bombing forays were harassing but little more, because the craft engaged were of too small capacity to carry enough bombs to work really serious damage, while the ever increasing range of the "Archies" compels the airmen to deliver their fire from so great a height as to make accurate aim impossible.
[Illustration: Photo Press Illustrating Service.
_A German Scout Brought to Earth in France._]
But Kiel, Wilhelmshaven and Zeebrugge are likely to change all this. The constant contemplation of those nests for the sanctuary of pestiferous submarines, effectively guarded against attack by either land or water, has stirred up the determination of the Allies to seek their destruction from above. Heavy bombing planes are being built in all the Allied workshops for this purpose, and furthermore to give effect to the British determination to take vengeance upon Germany, for her raids upon London. It is reported that the United States, by agreement with its Allies, is to specialize in building the light, swift scout planes, but in other shops the heavy triplane, the dreadnought of the air is expected to be the feature of 1918. With it will come an entirely novel strategic use of aircraft in war, and with it too, which is perhaps the more permanently important, will come the development of aircraft of the sort that will be readily adaptable to the purposes of peace when the war shall end.